How does one treat these events, now that my WAW is gone and wants absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me? Our 28th is on Nov 3, and her Bday is Nov 18. I don't feel right about just ignoring both, but I also don't feel right about acknowledging either at this point.

This is the second time she's walked away on us (kids and I). The first time was about 7 years ago, and we were separated for 9 months. During that period, she was having an affair, and was drinking heavily.

We reconciled, but she continued to drink heavily, so we never really re-connected. About 20 months ago, she went through treatment and started AA, and became an AA cult zombie for the next year. In the entire 6-1/2 years since we reconciled from her first departure, she never made any attempt to work on our marriage with me, except for this summer, when she FINALLY began to make steps towards me.

By early Sept., we were getting along better than we had in years, and one evening, she came over to sit with me on the couch, put her arms around me, and told me that she was starting to have feelings for me again. FINALLY, after 8 long years since her first bomb drop, I was going to have my beautiful wife back again!

Then, about a day or two later, I was flirting with her, and grabbed her playfully. She slapped me away and angrily shouted "Knock it off...I can't force what I don't feel."

To that, I responded "Stop being such a cold b!tch to me," and I went off to work. She withdrew and I withdrew, and we didn't talk for over a week. We exchanged a couple of terse emails, the last of which she said that she was leaving and wanted a divorce.

I finally talked to her, and told her that we had to stop this crazy divorce talk immediately. She said "No, I've made up my mind. I'm done, and I'm leaving. I've already talked to a friend, and I'm moving in there for the time being." Within 2 weeks, she was gone when I got home, leaving our 11 y/o daughter home alone, and sick with the flu.

I'm reasonably convinced that she's having another affair, though I don't have definitive proof. I've just seen the exact same pattern of behaviors from her that I saw last time around...frequent nights out (this time for AA meetings and functions) that were later and later each time, getting all showered up and putting on makeup/perfume/hair all done up/nice clothes, spending inordinate amounts of time with single girlfriend, mysterious phone calls that had her literally running down the hall to the bedroom to get behind a closed door, suddenly clutching onto her cell phone for dear life and erasing call history each night, etc. Lots of circumstantial evidence to indicate another affair.

At any rate, she wants nothing to do with me now, and won't even look at me anymore. She's already got her ring off her finger, and is living for free for the time being, so she's got absolutely not a care in the world. She's a happy little single girl again.

I'm doing the best I can with what's suddenly on my plate. Along with the stack of bills and difficult obligations, including raising the 11 y/o and a 17 y/o son, taking care of the house, etc., I've also got to go through a bankruptcy as a result of lingering debts racked up from the last time she moved out, and oh btw, I've also lost my job and will have to get acclimated to a new one in the midst of all of this.

I've started alanon, because I figured that I needed it, long ago. She's drank heavily for a long time, but really started hammering it down about 10 years ago, and that's right when our marriage started to fall apart, not coincidentally. Our eldest (24 now) was just beginning to get into drugs and alcohol at the time, and she crawled into a bottle to avoid having to deal with that. I just went along for the ride...and a fun one at that.

Surprisingly, I'm not nearly as emotionally devastated as I was the first time around. I guess partly because I've been through this before and that one just about killed me (seriously...it was this website that saved my life by giving me reason to hope, and thus a reason to want to live), and partly because I'd become so frustrated with the fact that she wasn't making any effort towards rebuilding our marriage all along, until very recently.

The thing that's so damned aggravating about this NOW is that, she pulled the plug the moment she began to have feelings for me again....something that she'd been unable to do for years, and something that I'd been trying for 8 long years to generate within her again.

I TRIED to get her to read the books and participate in the steps that would've rebuilt those feelings, but she had convinced herself long ago that no book was going to fix what was broken inside of her. Maybe she's right. Knowing how long she escaped her feelings by drinking to sedation, it's possible that she's just not capable of having or giving real feelings of love anymore. I don't know. I just know that, we were literally "THIS CLOSE" to having ourselves back on track, FINALLY, when she very suddenly and without any warning whatsoever, just bailed again.

I don't think there's any way that we'll avoid divorce this time, tragically, and frankly, I don't know if that's even a bad thing at this point. I've done everything that I can do, and with her giving up just when she started, and me waiting for 8 long years for her to even start, I just don't have the desire to go through all of it again. I'm finally resigning myself to the reality that she's gone forever, and I'm just going to have to learn to deal with that, as hard as it is. I still love her with all my heart, but how long can a man carry that kind of love for someone, without getting anything back? At some point, my desire for her to stay becomes every bit as selfish as her desire to leave.

The thing that I'm having trouble dealing with right now is that, while I'm literally up to my a$$ is monstrous responsibilities and stress, she's living the carefree, happy little single girl life all of the sudden. She just washed her hands of our entire 32 year relationship, our family, the house, the pets, everything, and is happy as a lark. It makes me literally seeth with rage, and I'm doing all I can to let that go.

I have my good days and bad. The other night, she visited my dream, and it was beautiful, and pure Freud. We had survived some horrible catastrophe...buildings were collapsed all around us, and lots of people were dead. We had to run as fast as we could to safety, so we ran hand in hand through the rubble. Every so often, we'd have to squeeze together through a very tiny area, and would be face to face and body to body. The third time, I leaned over a kissed her neck softly. She didn't push me away. The next time, we looked into each other's eyes and I leaned in to kiss her mouth. She met my mouth with hers open, and our tongues met, for the first time in years (she's not allowed ANY open mouth kissing for many years). Then I awoke, and was instantly sad and lonely.

I mostly get by with the thought that she WILL face some karma enlightenment at some point, but that's of small consolation for me at the moment. Mostly, it's day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, as you all well know.